Tuesday, November 13, 2012

A Day in the Life (Math Teacher edition)



Want to know what I did today?  Thought so. :)

5:20 - My alarm goes off (my first thought is always "Is it Friday?" I'm usually disappointed.). I get up and shower, get dressed, etc.
5:55 - Hubby and I wake up the kids. He's on his way out the door so it's up to me to get them going from here.  
6:15 - We're downstairs getting breakfast. I've already weathered two temper tantrums and in the next 16 minutes will eat, locate Barbies to take to school, clean up spilled grape juice, and made my lunch.
6:31 - We're out the door. 
6:57 - After a quick stop to drove the kids off at the babysitter, I arrive at school and make my way to my room. In the next 23 minutes, I'll log in to my computer, put away my lunch, talk with a former student about writing a college recommendation, talk with current student about rescheduling a retake, check email, crack open a Cherry Coke Zero, alphabetize a gdoc for teacher down the hall, talk with colleague about Problem-Attic and how overwhelmed she is looking at what we'll have to do next year for CCSS.
7:20 - 7:30 - Homeroom (take attendance, eat a donut brought to me by a student, work on that spreadsheet, and set up my projector)
7:34 - 8:24 -1st Period Precalc (I show the kids some unit circle tricks, go over HW questions, and assign new review sheet. I was planning to give a quiz tomorrow but because of field trip/lack of time, I postponed the quiz until Thursday.  I can't imagine they're upset by that news.)
8:24 - 8:32 - The kids leave and I start to scramble to get ready for Algebra 1 7th period. It's my planning period. 
8:32 -  Unfortunately, yesterday (!) I was asked to take part in an ETR planning meeting for a 7th period student.  I was promised it would be 10 - 15 minutes. 
9:02 - The meeting finally ends and I rush to copy stuff for 7th.
9:12 - I make it back to my 2nd floor room to drop off my copies and grab what I'll need for 3rd period. I have a student who recently had knee surgery and can't do the stairs, so I've had to move downstairs to accommodate. I head downstairs to get the room ready (pass out trig wheels, scissors, get the projector set up), realize I forgot my iPad connector and run back upstairs to retrieve it. I make it back downstairs just as bell rings.
9:22 - 10:12 3rd Period Precalc (repeat of 1st period)
10:16 - bell rings to start new class; I'm late because I have to now gather up my stuff and move back upstairs. 
10:18 - 11:06 - 4th Period Math Intervention. Ive been assigned 5 students who come on a daily basis to get math help ( if needed). Today I helped one girl with Alg1, one boy with geometry,and one boy with Algebra 2. After everyone was in good shape I was able to catch up with grading some Alg1 stuff and then realized that I want to give an assignment in 5th period. I scrambled to find something quickly. 
11:06 - The bell rings. I ran to the math office to get my lunch in the microwave then run downstairs to make copies. Luckily there wasn't much of a line, so I made it back up to eat lunch. Bell rings at 11:33. 
11:37 - 12:27 - 5th Period Honors Alg1. After a warm up and homework questions, I pulled out the Barbies that id hurriedly located (and dressed) this morning. It's Barbie Bungee day! Kids paired up to work in the hall and in my room. Just one casualty: a girl knocks a plant off my desk, so I have to clean up (though she offered). It was nice to see the boy who sleeps every day and not done one assignment contributing. 
12:31 - 1:21 - 6th Period Precalc (I'm thinking that a lot of these kids who have depended on memorizing formulas are going to be sorely disappointed here soon when I expect them to know what something means (like a radian) and then explain/apply it.)
1:25 - 2:15 - 7th Period Integrated Alg1. We start with a warm-up that leads nicely into Slope-Intercept Form, which was today's lesson. I actually had one girl tell me that i needed to make the class harder, because math classes are always hard. Ill take that as a compliment. Then we only had about 7 mins left, so skipped the exit slip and gave them some graphs to do on their own for homework. 
2:15 - 3:25 - School's out! I prepped for Wednesday and Thursday, found my next assignment for Int Alg 1 and Precalc for tomorrow. Then I edited last year's Precalc quiz for Thursday (my goal is to make it more thought-provoking each year), ran copies of it all. A former student stopped in to ask about when we switched x and y, then solved for y to find max/min (no clue what she's talking about... And it wasn't finding inverses). Then I realized that I wouldn't have time to hit a store on my way home (for brass brads for Precalc trig wheels) so I was grateful that Seiler popped in and offered to get some. 
3:25 - 3:50 I made my way to the car and drive home. 
3:50 - Home. I grabbed the dogs and walked up to end of road to get the kids off the bus. 
4:00 - 6:30 - Mom time. I get the kids to do their HW, get a fire started in fireplace, clean the floor from grape juice spill this am. Then I braid Strawberry Shortcake's hair, help with various dressing and undessing of Barbies, and order pizzas for dinner later. Commence random picking up of stuff around the house, go over spelling words with son, and listen to him read his 1-minute passage. (I'm hoping he'll have time to do 15 mins later.  He doesn't.) Then I check out twitter and find a link to other ppl's days. Fun!
6:30 - 9:20 Friends are at the house for church group. This normally involves a quick cleaning of the house after school but the cleaning ladies were here yesterday, thank goodness. 
FINALLY! Time to sit and relax. Luckily I didn't have any pressing schoolwork to bring home, so I sat with my iPad.  Played a little, edited this, and now it's bedtime. 
Less than 7 hours until I hear that alarm again!

1 comment:

Tina Cardone said...

What a busy day! Love the idea of making assessments more thought provoking each year.